DICE “Investigating” a “Beta” or “Test” Version of Battlefield 4 To Fix Bugs

Developers Digital Illusions CE might have had a busy week updating the PC version of Battlefield 4, but the patching is far from over.

Not only have the console versions of Battlefield 4 yet to receive any sort of update similar to the one the PC version received just last Thursday, but there are a number of other issues at hand that still require attention, including game crashes that the studio just can’t seem to shake.

Thanks to the sharp eyes of redditor Cucobr, we learned that DICE is looking into ways to smooth out the patching process in hopes to fix more issues than some of these new updates might potentially introduce. One avenue the studio is “investigating” is to open up a test version of the game to allow volunteers to experiment with different builds.

“You are right, building a game for PC is very difficult,” a DICE developer who goes by the name “FancySquirrel” on the Battlelog forums said in response concerns. “The huge amount of different [hardware] configurations out there is insane. And in BF4 we push the HW to its limits which makes these problems even more apparent. We are now investigating if we could have a ‘beta’ or ‘test’ version of the game up where we get the help from you (those of you who want to) test the game before [a patch] goes live.”

In no way is this an official announcement of such “test” or “beta” servers, but it might be something to look forward to if you happen to be keen on helping out DICE test new updates. In the end, it might just lead to a much more efficient patching process for a big, expansive game like Battlefield 4.

What are your thoughts. Do you think DICE, and us, the players, could benefit from “test” or “beta” servers? Let us know in the comments!

Just hope there would be some sort of benefit to people who get involved in this like free BF4 premium membership or something. Otherwise it just seems like they want free QA.

oofy

Isn’t that the premise of a beta?

pot51e

They just want more QA and testing; and what is wrong with that?

If 500,000 people who play 10 hours a week gave 1 hour to this kind of programme (or about 2 games of conquest), DICE would have more QA than a a 500 strong QA team could produce in 6 months.

I don’t need paying at that level of engagement to help a game I really like to develop and improve.

Aaron Williams

Well that’s u. Some of us feel paying anywhere from 30-60 bucks. For a game that has some real problems. They could have been found out with some real testing.

pot51e

Aaron; Have you actually read the article? This is about POST release beta testing of patches/fixes. You can either whine on teh outside or try and fix it from the inside. I’ve spent £60 (around 85 of your US dollars) on the game and premium.

To me, the sooner the bugs and crashes get fixed, the sooner I can enjoy the game, the sooner the return on my investment is realised. If I can influence that, and better still assist in that, why wouldn’t I??

Your statement “They could have been found out with some real testing.” …however is just plain wrong.

Surely what you meant to say is “SOME of them could have been found out with some MORE testing”.

Yes, and I agree. But that doesn’t change the reality.

BRI

BECAUSE THE EFFIN GAME SHOULD WORK UPON RELEASE!!!!

http://www.facebook.com/datkidfromawendaw Clay Johnson

Hey Bri how is that game of yours coming along? You know, the completely bug free game you’ve been making to show DICE how it’s done?

Matt

There’s buggy games, unfinished games and then there’s BF4.

meds

That’s cool. This is just my opinion. If I paid full price for a game that was crashing regularly and then asked to “beta test” a patch to get the game running as intended for no incentive I would feel a little ripped off. Not saying that running this in a semi-live testing environment is bad just a little recognition for those participating would be good (e.g. free battlepacks or premium etc).
t

DerpSlayer

Well aren’t we negative. I got news for you, people will flock to help.

MikePembo951

completely agree.

The gameplay & graphics are great, but I paid £30 for a game that crashes almost every match, advertised features such as levolution made the game crash too. The game was almost certain ‘not fit for purpose’ when it was released.

We paid for a game that should work – not one the was riddled with bugs, advertised features not working.

The game shouldn’t have been released, DICE certainly wasn’t ready, but EA clearly pushed them to release anyway – simply to beat CoD to the market and gain a few extra sales.

pot51e

Tell me now, here and now, what exactly it is you think you deserve?

You paid for it, you are entitled under the Sale Of Goods act (or whatever your local equivalent is) to take it back. Demonstrate your consumer choice.

Do this, and you deserve a refund – no more no less.

MikePembo951

We deserve a working game.
And you can’t get refunds since it is digital.

SCR3AMINGS1L3NCE

Yeah, that’s one reason I tend to shy away from digital downloads. That, and I can’t stand not having a tangible product- In this case, a game disc- That I can have on hand in case I need to replace a corrupted and/or lost digital version.

As for the working game, they’re trying and I applaud them for that. Have patience- You’ll love it in the end.

Oh, and part of the issue could be the large amount of players trying to get on the servers all at once. Like some other guys said, just give it a few days and that’ll sort itself out.

BRI

Ive got the game on ps4. Bought it cause I love Battlefield and was really looking forward to some epic 64 players conquest battles. But guess what? You cant even get a Conquest match. Shit is getting ridiculous. I love this gaming hobby but c’mon. Games should work from the get go. Shit I paid $60 bucks for it

therapiist

well, they better be ready for PS4 too. because the game also crash =(

eBunny

I think this is a great idea, some Steam games do the same.

Yevgenij Pekurovskyy

Yeah great idea, but they should have done this before release

Aaron Williams

Makes way to much sense. Lol why test it when u can use excuses that u don’t have enough time and it’s easier to have all those customers test it.

Indloon

It is better, when community tests the game. For example, if 300 people at DICE test the game in 1 hour, then there will be 300 hours of test time. When 10000 people test the game in 1 hour, then there will be 10000 hours of test time – that is 33x times more and it is more likely to have more bugs spotted.
Besides, game engines are very very complicated these days – Frostbite 3 is not exception for this, therefore it is hard to fix bugs without effecting other parts of engine: programmer fixes audio looping problem, then 2 other new bugs appear and so on and on.
Just take time, DICE aimed to release this game in the end of this year anyways, so except problems solved within this month and the next month.

Aaron Williams

It’s an excuse when Dice says it and when u say it , it’s sad.

All it takes simple i mean basic testing to find out a lot of these problems.

ANTHONYxSOPRANO

Haha, my PS4 plays the game perfectly and my PS3 only froze 5 times in 40hrs. Looks good on you PC jerks lol

Is there a solution for this yet? I am suffering because of the memory leaks…

swipe_06

Sadly, thats something that only DICE can fix. Basically it means that somewhere the game asks for memory from the system, but after using it, it does not give it back to the OS to reuse. If you do this too long, the OS will have enough of your antics, and will crash/shut you down.

blondbassist

Anyone feel asif the netcode is exactly the same as before?

DerpSlayer

Except its not. Much improved in BF4. Sorry but BF4 isn’t going to make you a better skilled player, that seems to be the expectation. “That guy killed me. NETCODE”. “That guy killed me. HAX”

swipe_06

Nothing works in this game as intended. Right now I think its safe to assume that the netcode is bugged too.

xThresher

I feel like the netcode is just a bit worse in some aspects. I’m getting so many trade kills and dying past corners more frequently than I was on BF3, but the hit detection seems a lot better imo.

oofy

Is trading a product of bad netcode? Honest question. I always thought trading was just two people who happen to kill each other at the same time.

MrSunshine

People don’t seem to realize that guns in Battlefield 3 & 4 actually shoot projectiles, the game has a ballistics model, “bullets” come out the gun, have a travel time and even have a “lifespan” after a short time. It’s not like other shooters that use “hit-scan” where everything is basically a laser, and things are hit instantly.

Dying past corners, on the other hand, is a connection issue.

http://www.facebook.com/datkidfromawendaw Clay Johnson

Kill trading came to light in Battlefield Bad Company 2 and for all of the reasons posted above because its the first Battlefield game not to use hitscan like older titles. You hit it right in the head MrSunshine

I honestly prefer kill trading rather than 0% health kills, which I have yet to see in this game and don’t want to see

oofy

Yes, to you and MrSunshine. Even without the physics and ballistic models in place, it just makes more sense that, if two individuals are shooting at each other, sometimes they’ll kill each other.

Katana67

Yeah, I mean there’s nothing wrong with mutual kills. It’s not a flaw, so I’m not sure what the OP was getting at.

Seeing someone walk away unimpeded with 1% health, however, is immensely frustrating. I get it, I didn’t kill you “all the way”, but jeeze… you can’t function with 1% of your face. 99% of which is now a bloody goo on the side of a building!

ThatSpeakerOfTruth

A high proportion of trading kills than should be expected can be due more to latency. This latency exists from when a player shoots the killing bullet and hits another to when the death is received by the server and instructions are passed out. Any time from before the killed player receives the fact that he’s been hit and killed, he could also be firing bullets back that his client may process a kill from as well.

Ergo, two players standing 10m apart with bullets travelling at 600m/s will need to fire nearly or exactly simultaneously in order to trade deaths given about a 17ms window to do so with the assumption of perfect netcode. That’s in comparison to maybe a 500ms ROF separation between each bullet fired and you’re looking at a 3.4% chance of a trade occurring in fights, and only when this shot is taken when both players are down to their last leg and land their final shot. This window can be drastically increased if clients are 200ms apart in regards to the server hosting them.

As for 0% kills, those are highly acceptable given a very rigid percentage-based health and damage system. Unless you would like to tilt luck to favor your side by dealing very slightly more damage than you actually did in a fight, the other player is simply lucky to have regenerated or been at some amount of health that needed an entire other bullet to push them over the edge. If the number irritates you, they could more easily ceiling the value so it appears as 1% instead. Otherwise, it is not typically a respectable thing in a numbers-heavy game to make anything, even decimals, an arbitrary amount.

Matt

TLDR 😀

http://www.facebook.com/datkidfromawendaw Clay Johnson

Well he is that speaker of truth lol

Matt

I stutter more since the patch… so annoying. I’ve put the game down in favor of Torchlight 2.

CoDforever

Any problems for BF4 on PS4 ? Looking forward to picking it up

dpg70

Many actually, but when you actually get to play its beautiful

xThresher

The game has crashed about 2 or 3 times for me, but otherwise I’ve had no problems and it plays fine.

zacflame

Yes.
It takes 74 hours to download, and installing is represented by a spinning circle, so you have no idea how long it takes and will get very frustrated.
Also, you are forced to download the campaign and Mp simultaneously.
Just do yourself a favor and get the disc copy. Also, if you bought the PS3 version and planned on upgrading digitally, upgrade disc-for-disc.

Hector Fajardo

That is not true at all. I would know. The game downloaded in 23 hours on a slow connection.

Matt

Took a hour and a half for me.

zacflame

My bad.
It took under 27 hours for me, but it requires a 74 hour install, but hey, at least you can play the first shitty mission over and over and over and over and over and over and over and kill me please.

Gannon

Yeah Conquest doesn’t work at all for me. Pretty frustrating.

Brian

Time to get off dial up.

Thomas Horsburgh

I was able to play the first two SP levels and it looked AMAZING; blew my expectations out of the water. But since then, my save file has been corrupted and the game crashes so often that I can’t even start the campaign again… not that I’d want to. Waiting for an update from DICE, but I’m not holding my breath. As it stands right now, I have a $400 Blu-ray player.

NinoBr0wn

I don’t care about single player, but my save apparently crashes every time I load the game, and I have to do my settings every time. Annoying as hell.

Katana67

Further underscoring how the Beta wasn’t actually a Beta at all.

dpg70

We’re not already playing a test build?

leeroy_newman

Wow, DICE said something smart, and the new update for PC is interresting, maybe i will buy the game now.

Yevgenij Pekurovskyy

buy it when its fixed

leeroy_newman

Yeah, i should wait a bit before i fall into the same trap like it happened with BF3.

Yevgenij Pekurovskyy

And what is up with that shitty operation locker map? I dont have anything against infantry only maps but putting 64 players on a cod sized map just doesnt work. You have all these idiots spaming granades and noobtubes at each other 24/7 and there are all these tight corridors with no cover. Havent DICE learned anything from operation metro, looks like they havent if they are bringing Metro back in second assault dlc.

Retro

DICE did learn from Metro. For whatever reason that damn map is the most popular. Just go look at the voting for most anticipated map on the Battlelog site.

Yevgenij Pekurovskyy

Yes, because console crowd has voted for it, they havent experienced 64 player matches on metro. 12 vs 12 is good for that map

Retro

I’d agree but there are more PC players out there and they are far more active on the Battlelog forums. I won’t blame this all on console players.

Yevgenij Pekurovskyy

Ok, doesnt surprise me that much because battlefield community is garbage

James Mulhall

It was still the most popular map on the PC version too..

Gannon

On PS4 I can’t even get into a Conquest game. Anyone else?

Matt

BF5 will be released before they finish patching this game… then the cycle can repeat.

dpg70

I hate to be “that guy”, but EA/DiCE won’t get my money next time until i see a working product. They’ve lost my trust with this release on PS4 in particular. Issues were expected, but this is ridiculous.

Branddon

This is what happens when you push a game’s release date to beat Call Of Duty.

Derek

How about fixing the glitch to get unlimited flares. Its getting pretty bad now. Everyone is figuring out that all you have to do is change seats and it resets the flare timer.

And yes I just said how to do it. I hope it makes the game unplayable so Dice will get off their ass and fix it.

Ben August

…because the first Beta proved to be so effective…

B_Boss

This would also help nextgen versions, as they never had a chance to interact with a beta version as of yet.

grehund

What WOULD’VE been a great idea, would’ve been to spend LONGER testing the game in Beta, BEFORE “releasing” it.